Chris BarbicFounding Superintendent

February 1, 2015Achievement School District of Tennessee

P-12

Teacher workforce

Chris Barbic became the founding superintendent of the
Achievement School District in August 2011. In this role, Barbic
leads an effort to build a statewide school district designed to
authorize great charter schools, give the educators in those
schools freedom and resources, and hold them accountable for
breakout results. The ASD has set a goal to move
Tennessee’s Priority Schools – the bottom 5 percent – to the top
25 percent. The ASD currently has 23 schools serving
approximately 6,500 students in Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.
Last year, ASD students grew faster in math and reading
proficiency than the statewide average, and the students in
priority schools are growing four times faster than the rest of
the state. After graduating from Vanderbilt University,
Barbic joined Teach For America in 1992 and taught middle school
for six years in Houston, where he was named Houston Independent
School District’s Outstanding Young Educator. In 1998,
Barbic founded and led YES Prep Public Schools, which is often
recognized as one of the highest-performing charter management
organizations in the nation and won the inaugural Broad
Foundation Prize for the best CMO in the country in 2011.